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Dessert

Croustades a LA Poissonniere

Croustades à la poissonnière are pastry cups filled with rice and a minced turbot mixture, topped with Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Turbot and lobster work together. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Croustades a LA Poissonniere

a dozen pastry cases
Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cases

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a dozen mince pie pans with butter.

  3. Roll out the pastry to about ¼ inch thick and line the pans.

  4. Prick the pastry and fill each with raw rice. Bake in the oven until golden, then shake out the rice and remove the pastry cups.

Make the filling

  1. In a bain‑marie, warm the minced turbot with the lobster sauce and a pinch of mace. Keep the pastry cups and filling hot.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill each pastry cup with the hot mince and dust with grated Parmesan. Serve immediately on a hot napkin.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turbot + lobstertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Rice + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Rice + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together932 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Turbot
Forms the main body of the filling, providing the fish flavour and texture.
Lobster sauce
Adds moisture and rich shellfish flavour so the minced fish stays tender and moist.
Pastry
Forms the crisp, golden case that holds the filling.
Parmesan cheese
Adds a savoury, salty flavour and browning on the surface of the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the pastry cases blind with rice. Pricking the pastry and weighing it down with raw rice keeps the cases from puffing and collapsing, so they bake flat, crisp and golden enough to hold the hot filling without going soggy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, turbot, lobster, parmesan cheese):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, turbot, lobster, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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